The Terrible 2’s?

Cake
Happy 2nd birthday to me!

This week, I celebrate my two-year blogiversary.

I started The Dreaming Panda when I was at my absolute worst—I couldn’t walk, I’d lost thirteen pounds, I could barely stay awake, and I was morbidly depressed. This means it’s been two years since that first trip to the ER when everything got so bad and precipitated a resolution to eight years of misdiagnoses.  So I’m now two years into my recovery journey.

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Why I Run in the Rain

My PANDAS is a rain storm that seems it will never stop...
My PANDAS is a rain storm that sometimes seems it will never stop…

It’s 8 AM on a Saturday, and rather than sleeping in as you might expect for a college student, I’m lacing up my running shoes and getting ready to bolt across town.

However, this weekend, when I opened my blinds, I almost pulled the covers back over me; I saw it was raining with no sign of stopping.

I’d never run in the rain before, and the mere idea of it caused the shivers. I had so much homework, and the only time I had to spare was in the morning.  But I love running so much.  How could I let a little bad weather keep me from it?

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Let It Roll: OCD & Trail Biking

Recently, I’ve taken up trail biking, and strangely, there are a lot of parallels between becoming a trail biker and overcoming OCD…

Ever since last summer, I’ve been apprehensive about getting on a bike, considering that my legs used to give out on me frequently when I walked. If one of these attacks happened as I rode a bike at 20 mph down a road, I could get seriously hurt.

But this week, I got back on my bike anyway and rolled into the woods, following a friend of mine who’s an avid trail biker.

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The Day I Outran My Illness

Medal-small

There are some moments in life that you can never forget—moments when your whole world is turned upside, for better or worse. Living with PANS, a disease that sets in overnight and flares up in the same way, I’ve had more than my fair share of those life-changing moments.

However, another such moment (albeit a more positive one) happened on Saturday when I finished my first half-marathon: 13.1 slow, arduous miles.

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My Last Piece of Freedom

Last summer, over the course of a few hours, I suddenly became unable to walk due to an autoimmune attack in my brain. If I tried to go from my living room to the kitchen, I fell multiple times because my legs would suddenly give out.

In one moment of insight during that horrendous time when I had not only lost the ability to walk but had essentially lost my mind, I said to myself, I’m going to run a marathon someday and overcome this. And I’m going to beat my best 5k time from eight years ago within the next year.

It was truly a crazy idea. Maybe I still wasn’t in my right mind when I came up with that…

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My 6-Mile Run… To the Pharmacy

Managing my medications is a big production. If I didn’t have a pill case, there’s no way I could possibly remember to take all eleven things each day.  Every week, I sit down and fill the case for the week. It takes half-an-hour. It used to take longer when my OCD was worse and I had to check and re-check everything a ridiculous number of times. I only check it once now.

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I Run 5 Miles, but I Can’t Walk 50 Feet

Suddenly losing the ability to walk at nineteen years old is terrifying and heartbreaking. I never thought it would happen to me, but this summer, it did. In a matter of twenty-four hours, I became unable to walk across a room without falling down multiple times.

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